Someone on Mastodon was whingeing about cookie consent banners yesterday. Yeah, they’re generally ugly and intrusive. It prompted me to look at my cookie history, though, and I realized that the problem isn’t the regulations that require cookie consent, the problem is the cookies. You might have noticed that twoprops.net doesn’t have cookie consent banners. Why? No cookies.
The reason for almost all the cookies stored in my browser is tracking and surveillance. If sites aren’t tracking or surveilling you, they don’t need cookie consent banners.
I can already hear so-called web designers wailing “Hurr Durr… what about login credentials?? Huh???” Guess what, if someone is logging in, they have created an account. If they’re creating an account, the cookie consent should simply be part of the user agreement. No pop-up banner needed.
You’ve probably noticed that twoprops.net doesn’t have cookie consent banners. Is that twoprops’ giant middle finger to EU regulators? No. twoprops.net doesn’t have cookie consent banners because twoprops doesn’t use cookies. At all. Why would we? You don’t need cookie consents for login cookies. Everything else is tracking.
Cookie consent banners really should read “DO YOU WANT US TO COLLECT DATA ON YOU THAT WE DON’T NEED BUT WE COULD SELL OR LEAK TO PEOPLE WHO WANT TO USE IT TO BOTHER YOU?” I’ll bet all the sites that currently use cookies gratuitously would find a way to somehow survive without them.
—2p